'Tom Cruise is distractingly bad': Star's latest movie is savaged by US critics

Tom Cruise's latest movie has been slammed by US critics who have dubbed his performance as ‘distractingly bad.’

The 46-year-old actor stars as real-life Nazi officer Colonel Stauffenberg, the mastermind behind the last known assassination plot to kill Adolf Hitler during World War II, in Valkyrie which is released this month.

But reviewers have been less than impressed with the film and it's star.

Panned: Tom Cruise, pictured promoting Valkyrie on a US TV show yesterday, has been described as 'distractingly bad' in Valkyrie

Christy Lemire from the Associated Press gave the most stinging review, claiming that the actor’s delivery overshadows the production of everyone else's work in the film.

‘Arguably miscast, Cruise is stiff and unconvincing as the courageously heroic German officer,’ he says.

MSNBC film critic Alonso Duralde was also unimpressed:

‘…There’s a gaping hole at the centre of Valkyrie, and his name is Tom Cruise,' he says.

‘He’s the only actor in the film not doing either a British or a German accent — more on that in a moment — and he spends every moment on screen glowering and purring angrily.

‘The actor appears lost without being able to launch his usual charm offensive, and whatever dark sides that Oliver Stone was once able to plumb from this performer seems nonexistent.’

Tom Cruise at the world premiere of the film in New York last week

In real life, the plot on July 20, 1944 failed and Stauffenberg, along with thousands of other co-conspirators, was executed.

Cruise spent much of last year in Germany making the movie, which became known as a jinxed venture.

Extras were wounded during filming, film was destroyed in a lab and had to be re-shot - and, most damningly, there was a rushed re-shoot of key scenes after test audiences fell asleep during secret screenings.

Last week the movie was given a roasting by German critics.

'Cruise as Stauffenberg is about as deep as a bowl of cornflakes,' said the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.

'The only thing that can definitely be said about this cinema adventure is that Tom Cruise, who has been damaged by his bizarre talk show behavior, may well continue storming the heights of the Scientology hierarchy as a thetan - but his image as an actor has been finally ruined by Valkyrie,' wrote Taggespiegel.

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'Tom Cruise is distractingly bad': Star's latest movie is savaged by US critics